


Unwrapping a Christmas Mystery

by j_majka



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fun Shenanigans, Marichat, pre reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28367793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_majka/pseuds/j_majka
Summary: Chat Noir does a bit of investigating when he discovers something strange about Marinette.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 8
Kudos: 159





	Unwrapping a Christmas Mystery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trashcatontherooftop](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashcatontherooftop/gifts).



> Merry Christmas T-Cat!!!!!! I am your APS Secret Santa and I had a lot of fun writing this little story for you! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Thank you to iveofficiallygonemad on tumblr for beta reading and coming up with the title of this fic.

Being a superhero, Adrien had gotten used to random people wanting a picture from the great Chat Noir. Or sometimes they just wanted to meet him and talk to him. But he could not remember one time someone has invited him into their room to give him a gift.

Marinette was definitely different from everyone else. A good different not bad. There could never be anything bad about Marinette. 

Despite having been in Marinette’s room countless times before, Adrien couldn’t help but stare in awe and appreciate how nice and homey her room felt compared to his.

With Christmas just around the corner and final exams season coming to a close, Marinette’s room was messier than normal. On her desk, stacks of textbooks with notes sticking out of them had been pushed to the side in favor of Marinette’s light pink sewing machine. Half-finished projects lay on her chaise —he tried not to look too much in case there was something for him— while rolls of wrapping paper laid scattered all over her bed. 

“Woah, looks like Santa Paws workshop found a new home,” Adrien commented while smirking.

Marinette just rolled her eyes. Man, he really had to up his pun game. “I invite you into my home to give a gift and this is how you treat me?”

“Ah, apologies, princess. I just love how you’re putting so much thought into these gifts here. Even thought to give one to a poor little stray like me.”

“You’re not a stray Chat.” Marinette rang the bell on his suit and turned to look through a few bins near her bed. “You’re a hero, so obviously you’re on the nice list.”

“I’m still a nice kitty even after I snuck into a young teen’s room in the middle of the night?” Adrien mused playfully, causing Marinette to stop her search and turn to look at him. 

“Shouldn’t I be the naughty one since I invited you in?” Marinette smirked, taking a step towards Adrien. 

“Well I accepted the invitation, so wouldn’t that make us both naughty?” Adrien took a step forward.

“In that case, I guess it depends on what Santa thinks.” 

Somehow Adrien and Marinette had gotten so close that their noses were practically touching. Their eyes locked for a second and Adrien could’ve sworn that time froze. Just the two of them there together felt _right_.

Marinette came back to reality first, jumping back suddenly, startling Adrien.

“Uh, yo-you um know what I think I present d-downstairs left. Yeah! I’ll uh go you that for get.” Marinette rushed out of her room, a bright red blush covering her face.

Adrien could feel the heat on his face and imagined he had a similarly big blush. 

In order to distract his mind from the moment, yeah definitely not a romantic moment or anything, Adrien decided to look around at Marinette’s little workshop.

He had to admit while at first glance it looked like a chaotic mess, Marinette had everything organized in its own perfect Marinette way. 

Next to her sewing machine, she had two lists of names. The longer list had a lot of names Adrien recognized as his classmates, Kagami, Luka, and a bunch of other names that seemed familiar. Adrien tried to make sense of the shorter list, but he couldn’t figure out why people like Chloe, Lila, and XY had in common with some of the names he didn’t recognize. He knew some on the list were not necessarily the best people, but why would Marinette have a list of all these people? Unless it was...nah that couldn’t be true.

Shaking away the stray thought, Adrien went over to look at Marinette’s gift wrapping/finished gifts station. She had 5 different types of wrapping paper, which all looked extremely fancy and expensive, along with red, white, and green seemingly hand-made bows. Wow, he never knew she put so much love into wrapping gifts.

Glancing down, Adrien noticed the bins Marinette had been looking through. Marinette had two large bins set up and both were about half filled with presents, which was more gifts than Adrien had gotten during any Christmas ever. 

“Woah…” Adrien leaned in closer to get a good look at the wrapping on the presents, but he started losing his balance. 

Adrien flailed his arms, trying to reclaim his balance while also attempting not to ruin any gifts.

“Oof!” Adrien groaned as he landed on an additional bin. Unlike the other bins, the bin he landed on was closed, likely already filled with presents. 

Curiosity over-taking him, Chat opened the bin, just to peek and saw a whole lot of presents all of different sizes. The presents were wrapped with a different paper than the others. She probably ran out of the paper earlier.

“What are you doing?” 

Chat jumped away from the bins of presents, startled by Marinette’s sudden arrival. 

Marinette appeared at the door to her room with a present wrapped in a black paper with neon green paws. 

“I was just admiring your handiwork. You seem to have made quite a lot of presents here for everyone it seems.” Adrien scratched the back of his neck, silently hoping that Marinette wouldn’t be mad that he was looking at her army of gifts. 

“Oh, uh thanks. Happy Holidays! I hope you enjoy it!” Marinette thrust the gift into Adrien’s hands.

“Can I open it now?” Adrien asked eagerly. He was excited to know what Marinette had made him because he knew whatever it was would be amazing just like her. 

“No silly kitty,” Marinette giggled. “You have to wait until Christmas.”

“But that’s a week awayyyy,” Chat whined.

“Well you could wait until after you leave, so I can have plausible deniability when Santa asks. But you know what they say.”

Adrien scrunched his eyebrows. “What do they say?”

“He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good. So he knows when you open presents early.”

“Hey! That’s not how the song goes!”

Marinette laughed. “Maybe for others but for silly kitties like you that’s exactly how it goes.”

Adrien huffed and pouted.

“Aw don’t pout Chat. Christmas’ll be here before you can even say ‘I want to open my present from Marinette Dupain-Cheng’.”

xXx

Christmas did not come once Adrien spoke Marinette’s magical words. In fact, all her words did was make him want to open her gift even more.

In an attempt to distract himself from the extremely tempting gift, Adrien chose to start thinking about his class’ secret santa they were having in two days. He was particularly excited for this one because this was the first Christmas celebration he would enjoy with his classmates.

Every year, some of the students across classes decided to have a fun little party right before the holidays as a way to catch up during break. He’s always missed out on the get together because his father thought it best for Adrien to stay home throughout the break, but his friends finally convinced his father to let Adrien go this year.

Just thinking about it right now was enough to make Adrien excited and forget about the gift stuffed in his sock drawer. 

During the party, his class in particular wanted to do a secret santa, and Adrien had drawn Rose. He had been having a tough time coming up with something, mostly because he didn’t know what she would want and whenever he asked Plagg all he suggested was cheese, which was not helpful at all. 

Now would be as good a time as any to start thinking about that again. Instead of thinking about the gift Marinette made for him. 

He still couldn’t believe that out of all the gifts Marinette was making for their classmates she still thought to make a gift for Chat Noir, a hero Marinette barely interacted with.

Wait...why was Marinette making all of those gifts for their classmates if she only needed to make one for her secret santa? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Unless they were a surprise?

No. That can’t be it. She had people on her list that weren’t coming to the party. Why would she mix her lists? And why would she make so many gifts? It’s not like any of their classmates would forget to bring something for secret santa. Well, Chloe and Lila were debatable, but Chloe had made it well known she wasn’t coming and Lila was ‘supposedly’ out of town for the holidays. 

So what were the extra presents for?

Maybe Plagg might have some idea. 

“Hey, Plagg, why would someone make presents for a lot of people if they didn’t have to make them?”

“You mean why does Santa exist?”

Or maybe not. 

Plagg floated up next to Adrien, a wedge of stinky Camembert in his paws. “You know that whole Santa Claus thing is a hoax, right? Some fictional character taking credit for stuff miraculous holders have done for centuries. Shameful.” 

Plagg tossed his Camembert in the air and swallowed it whole, but Adrien couldn’t feel disgusted.

“Wait, miraculous holders are the ones who give kids gifts on Christmas?” Adrien asked, moving closer to Plagg.

“Yup, the holder of the reindeer miraculous first started the tradition of giving kids gifts on Christmas. Whenever holders were available they’d go out and help the reindeer miraculous holder. Help ‘em deliver all those gifts around the world.”

Plagg paused for a second, Adrien assumed for dramatic flair. Sadly, Adrien was wrong as Plagg burped right in Adrien’s face.

“Aw gross Plagg!” Adrien tried to disperse the smell by waving his hand in front of the nose, but the scent of Camembert still made it through. 

“You know some people consider a kwami’s burp to be special? A blessing of sorts. I don’t know. Humans are weird creatures.” Plagg flew back over to his cheese stash, clearly still hungry.

“Wait, Plagg, what does the reindeer miraculous look like?” Maybe if Plagg at least knew what it was then maybe Adrien could rule Marinette out of being the world’s Santa and there was a completely different explanation for why Marinette had all those gifts. 

“How should I know? I’ve never even been around the holder.” Plagg scarfed down another piece of cheese. “Everything I know comes from the other kwamis.”

Well that wasn’t helpful. But the more Adrien thought about it, the more everything seemed to make sense. Marinette is the elusive Santa Claus, at least while she holds the reindeer miraculous, which means she has to prepare all those gifts for the children of the world by herself.

“Plagg, you said other miraculous holders aid the reindeer holder during Christmas right?”

xXx

Adrien looked dashing. 

As a way to try and disguise himself as Chat Noir (so people didn’t lose the joy of Christmas), Adrien bought an elf costume. The costume consisted of a dark green tunic and candy cane striped pants. It also came with a red hat with elf ears sewn on the sides and a long pink wig attached around the bottom. 

Paired with his superhero suit, Adrien thought he looked pretty amazing. He was the perfect elf and he doubted people would be able to tell he was Chat Noir unless they were right up in his face. 

Marinette was gonna love this.

Ah, Marinette. The mystical Santa of the world.

After the get-together the other day, Adrien was convinced Marinette was the reindeer miraculous holder since the only gift she brought had been a set of handmade hair accessories for Juleka. 

He couldn’t wait to see the look on Marinette’s face when she saw that she had a helper to deliver presents with. 

xXx

“Elf Chat Noir reporting for duty.” Adrien saluted Marinette with the most serious face he could pull.

“What?” Instead of the joy Adrien had been expecting, Marinette looked confused and concerned.

“I’m your Christmas helper! I’m here to help you, ‘Santa’, deliver presents to the children of the world,” Chat stated proudly.

“No, yeah, I’m still lost. You think I’m Santa?”

“Yeah! Or at least the real Santa, who’s actually a miraculous holder.” Adrien gave Marinette a big smile, but her furrowed brow and frown soon caused his smile to fall as well. “You have no idea what I’m talking about do you?”

“All I’m getting from this conversation is Santa and miraculous. And I’m not really sure what those two things have in common.”

“Oh.” Adrien sat down on the floor of Marinette’s room. “Um, apparently the jolly gift giver we know as Santa is actually a miraculous user like me, and well, I thought that, well, I thought you were that miraculous user.”

Marinette squatted down on the floor with Adrien. “What on earth made you think I could be this miraculous holder?”

“I mean you had two lists and I guess I thought they were naughty and nice lists. Plus you have a ton of gifts in here. Like you have those two bins _and_ that chest with who knows how many gifts. It just made sense I guess.”

“Oh Chat. Those gifts are for a charity drive I’ve been helping run at the school. Most were just donated by students. That’d be madness if I had actually made all those gifts.”

Oh. He did remember seeing flyers around the school for a gift drive, but he never knew it was Marinette heading the event.

“What about the two lists?”

“One was a list of people who had donated gifts and the other was a list of people who ‘claimed’ they were gonna donate money.”

Adrien facepalmed. “Wow, now I feel so stupid.”

“Hey! It’s not your fault! I’m sure anyone else might have drawn a similar conclusion.” Marinette smiled a little bit. 

“Really?”

“Uh...maybe not the _same_ conclusion, but perhaps a similar one?” Her smile fell a little. “But I am glad you thought me good enough to be Santa.”

“You’re the best person I know. Don’t tell Ladybug though.” 

Marinette giggled and for a few seconds that was the only noise in the room. It was nice just hearing Marinette’s laugh, sitting on the floor of her room. 

“So do you think a Christmas helper like yourself would mind helping me deliver some presents to a local charity?” Marinette asked, standing up.

“It would be my pleasure madame Santa Claus.”


End file.
